Books read January through December 1966
| Author | Hunter, Sam |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Dell / Laurel, 1966 |
| Copyright Date | 1956 |
| Number of Pages | 256 |
| Extras | Black and white and color photos of paintings, chronology, glossary, bibliography, index |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Art; History |
| When Read | January 1966 |
This small Dell paperback takes up the history of French painting where Friedlaender's David to Delacroix left off, covering the period from 1855 to 1956. It discusses the famous movements of naturalism, impressionism, expressionism, cubism, abstract art, etc., and the many famous painters who created those movements.
Hunter's book was an attempt to explain complex and revolutionary ideas in painting to a popular audience. My copy is a small paperback measuring 6-3/8 x 4-1/8 inches and showing "ninety five cents" on the cover. However the page count is higher than Friedlaender's book and the print is fairly small. The many color reproductions are undoubtedly inaccurate, but they convey more to the popular reader than Friedlaender's black and white which assume that the reader has seen the original paintings or other color reproductions. In looking at the book today it seems to me to be popularly written but both knowledgeable and intelligent. I think I liked the book when I read it and would like it if I read it again today.
| Author | James, Henry |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Rinehart and Co., 1957 |
| Copyright Date | 1950 |
| Number of Pages | xxiv + 357 |
| Extras | Edited and with an introduction by Quentin Anderson |
| Genres | Fiction; Short stories |
| When Read | January 1966 |
Eight stories are included: "Four Meetings", "The International Episode", "The Real Thing", "The Middle Years", "The Pupil", "The Beast in the Jungle", "The Birthplace", "The Jolly Corner".
I probably read all, or all but one, of the stories since I see a check mark against all but one of them in the copy that I still own. This was my introduction to Henry James and was likely read for an English class. The only story I remember after all these years is The Beast in the Jungle, and that only scantily. This was my introduction to Henry James and was likely read for an English class. The only story I remember after all these years is The Beast in the Jungle, and that only scantily.
James' artistic sensibility was different from my own. I can't say that I greatly enjoyed his writing. Nevertheless there was no denying that he had a great ability to penetrate to the hearts of his characters. Later in 1966, after I read The Portrait of a Lady, my appreciation of James grew. I read more of his books after that.
| Author | Spinoza, Baruch de |
|---|---|
| Publication | |
| Copyright Date | 1677 |
| Number of Pages | 87 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Philosophy |
| When Read | February 1966 |
Spinoza's greatest work was only published after his death. To have published it earlier would have almost certainly caused him to be persecuted by the authorities, even in Holland, probably the most free and liberal state in Europe. It was also his most difficult work and possibly the single most difficult book of philosophy that I attempted to read (though Hegel and Kant produced some strong competitors for that title.) There were five "books" or chapters. I read the first two, "Of God" and "Of the Nature and Origin of the Mind". Each is organized along the lines of a geometry text. There are three sections in each book. "Definitions" define the concepts that he will be using such as "cause", "finite", "substance", "attribute", "mode", "God", "free", and "eternity". "Axioms" are propositions that are presumably self-evident and are assumed in the next section. "Propositions" are true statements that follow from definitions, axioms, and previously proven propositions. The truth of each proposition is established (at least to Spinoza's satisfaction) in demonstrations that are not unlike demonstrations of theorems of geometry.
As I recall, we studied Spinoza briefly in Professor Kockelmans' class but did not attempt to read the Ethics. I think I took that on outside of the class in an attempt to better understand this very famous philosopher. I gave up after reading only two of the five books, not only because it was very difficult reading but also, I think, because I found the premise of God = Nature (sometimes called "pantheism", though I am not sure that any of the ancient pantheists were like Spinoza) to be a disguised and oblique approach to something that I wanted him to treat more openly. I also found the method of mathematical demonstration to be an unnecessarily implausible approach to a set of problems that admitted of argument, but not necessarily of proof. I soon turned to other philosophers and other books.
Now, after reading Jonathan Israel's Radical Enlightenment in 2018, I have a better understanding of the historical milieu in which Spinoza worked, of how daring it was for him to publish his ideas at all, and of how necessary it was for him to cloak his thinking in ways of expressing them that were as difficult as possible for the religious and secular authorities to attack them. To deny the existence of God, or at least of a providential God, could have resulted in imprisonment or even death. To dress up a belief in science as being the same thing as a belief in God was one way to shield himself from attack. Of course he was attacked anyway and only escaped more severe persecution by delaying publication of some of his ideas, by obscuring others, by publishing in foreign countries with made up author names and book titles and, unfortunately, by dying of natural causes before anyone was able to hang, or maybe even draw and quarter, him.
I don't plan to take another pass at the Ethics but, who knows, I may yet manage to read one of his other books and/or to read more about the period of the radical enlightenment.
I found a copy of the Ethics bound with On the Improvement of the Understanding in my basement library. There were two pages of penciled notes inserted and some marginal notes on Proposition XVII "Of God": "God acts from the laws of his own nature only and is compelled by no one." Written in the upper right corner of the blank page opposite the cover I found "Josephine Epstein", the name of my mother-in-law. Who knew that she read Spinoza? The hand writing was very difficult for me to read, but I left her notes in the book and maybe one day someone will read them and wonder about her.
| Author | Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm |
|---|---|
| Publication | |
| Copyright Date | 1714 |
| Number of Pages | Unknown |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Philosophy |
| When Read | February 1966 |
At age 68, two years before his death, Leibniz published this work on what he considered to be the fundamental substances, both material and spiritual, in the universe. He saw them as "monads", individual, indivisible objects that could combine to form compound objects but are not themselves composed of smaller objects - though they do have different properties.
The book, or essay, or whatever we call it, is freely available in English translation on the Internet as a 15 page PDF, or in book form with hundreds of pages, which I presume are mainly discussion and commentary. I don't remember what version I read. It would have been whatever was assigned in Professor Kockelmans' class in rationalism at the University of Pittsburgh.
It would be tempting, and many readers have been tempted, to consider this work a precursor to our modern atomic theory, and perhaps also as a follow on to the atomism of Democritus. I don't remember what I thought of this as a philosophy student, though I don't now think of monads as what we now know as atoms. John Dalton proposed his theory of atoms in 1803 based on empirical experiments. Leibniz, if I understand him, based his theory purely on what seemed to him to be logical truths, not backed by, or requiring backing by, empirical observation.
We can't blame him. We know him to have been brilliant, and his support for rationalism and something very like pantheism, in spite of the calumny heaped upon Spinoza, was courageous. However, although modern science had made a great beginning, it was not yet able to properly describe elements and compounds or atoms and molecules. It just didn't have what was needed to understand, or begin to understand (I won't say we've gone too far past the beginning) a modern theory of matter. I seem to recall thinking, back in the University, that Leibniz was onto something, but was not yet able to go too far with it. However I may just be projecting my current ideas back onto the past.
| Author | Copleston, Frederick |
|---|---|
| Publication | |
| Copyright Date | 1957 |
| Number of Pages | 193 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Philosophy; History |
| When Read | March 1966 |
This is part of a well known nine volume general history of philosophy written by a scholar and Jesuit priest. This volume covers the three most famous rationalists - Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz plus it includes a chapter on Malebranche.
I would have been reading this book alongside the writings of Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz. I thought it was a very lucid explanation of ideas that are not easily understood. As I recall, it was like most philosophical history written and read in the English speaking world in those days in that it was very much a history of ideas and very little a history of the social, cultural, economic and political context of those ideas.
In addition to this large history, C is also known for a BBC radio debate with Bertrand Russell on the existence of God. I listened to or read a transcript of the debate (I don't remember which) and, although I thought Russell won hands down, I thought Copleston did a very creditable job. He tried to make his points and didn't use the kind of deceptive practices used by the "creationists" in contemporary debates. [I use the word "contemporary" rather than "modern" because, in the history of philosophy, "modern philosophy" refers to the work of the 17th century rationalists.]
| Author | Updike, John |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Alfred A. Knopf |
| Copyright Date | 1963 |
| Number of Pages | 302 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | March 1966 |
This was a complex, experimental novel that mixed Greek mythology with contemporary American culture. It involved a father and son, each with difficulties and dissatisfactions.
I don't remember reading the novel. I presume it was for an English class. I do remember that I was a fan of Updike at that time, as I still am today.
| Author | Berkeley, George |
|---|---|
| Publication | Unknown |
| Copyright Date | 1710 |
| Number of Pages | 130 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Philosophy |
| When Read | March 1966 |
This was Berkeley's first publication of his ideas of "immaterialism". It was apparently not well received by the philosophical community and he followed it with the more accessible Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous, q.v.
See the notes on the Three Dialogues for comment on Berkeley's philosophy.
| Author | Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich |
|---|---|
| Original Language | German |
| Translators | Hartman, Robert S. |
| Publication | The Library of Liberal Arts, 1953 |
| Copyright Date | 1837 |
| Number of Pages | xlii + 95 |
| Extras | Editor's introduction by Robert Hartman |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Philosophy; Historiography |
| When Read | April 1966 |
From Hartman's introduction, page xi:
"The power of Hegel's philosophy lies in its form rather than its content. Although the content is overwhelming in its encyclopedic width, yet the transitions from fact to fact, following the links of the dialectic concatenation, are sometimes forced, and the 'facts' marshaled little factual. On the other hand, what brilliance and perspicacity the philosophy has, and the very universality of its scope, it owes to the method - the dialectic logic - which drove Hegel on and on to encompass more and more phenomena, wider and wider regions of knowledge, within its systematic frame."
Is Hartman's analysis a simplistic explication of Hegel? Perhaps we should all read the text again to find out - or not as the case may be. The two reader/reviewers of this book on thriftbooks.com, both sophisticated readers I think, suggested this fairly difficult book as a good introduction to Hegel's even more dense and complex Phenomenology of Mind. I am pretty sure that I read it for that reason, looking for something short that would enable me to get a grip on Hegel's ideas and his approach to writing about them.
My policy has always been to not add a title to my list of books read unless I read it from beginning to end. The yellow highlighting and marginal notes I inserted in the book indicate that I did, indeed, read it to the end. I think I could do it again but I'd need more motivation for it than I have right now.
| Author | Locke, John |
|---|---|
| Editor | Fraser, Alexander Campbell |
| Publication | New York: Dover Publications, 1959 |
| Copyright Date | 1690 |
| Number of Pages | cxl + 533 |
| Extras | "Collated and annotated, with prolegamena, biographical, critical, and historical by Alexander Cambell Fraser" |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Philosophy |
| When Read | April 1966 |
"1. Since it is the understanding that sets man above all other animals and enables him to use and dominate them, it is certainly worth our while to enquire into it." So begins Locke's great work propounding the empiricist view that the human mind is a tabula rasa, a blank slate, upon which experience provides input and reason develops knowledge from it.
This is advertised by Dover as an unabridged and unaltered version of Fraser's 1894 edition.
I still have both volumes that I bought in the University of Pittsburgh bookstore in my basement library. I doubt very much that I read the entire work, but I know that I did read sections from both volumes. I would have been reading assigned portions in one of my history of philosophy classes. I seem to remember having studied ancient philosophy, then rationalism, then empiricism, each for one semester.
We know much more about the mind today than was known in Locke's time, but we learned it using the methods of observation, experiment, empirical research, and scientific criticism that Locke formulated for us. His work was a reaction against the rationalist view that knowledge came from the elaboration of first principles, but it was certainly not a reaction against rationality in thought. He was no believer in revealed truth. As with every philosopher of Locke's time, he tiptoes carefully in the garden of Christianity, being very careful both to acknowledge and to not tread upon any of the sacred principles of the religion of those times, but he sows his share of the seeds of doubt and, as the rationalists did, I believe that he encourages people to think for themselves and to look for empirical evidence for their beliefs.
Today, our knowledge of the human mind is still strictly limited. I think that many decades, and perhaps some centuries, will be required before we know as much about the operation of the brain as we do about the heart, the lungs, the liver, or the kidneys. Locke understood the limits of contemporary biology and medicine but it appears to me that he fully understood, at least in part and maybe in full, that humans are physical objects and that science is critical in developing our understanding of them.
I was impressed by Locke. His writings on both philosophy and politics were seminal. I think that many modern readers might be underwhelmed by his ideas simply because they often seem to be obvious. But they weren't obvious when he introduced them.
| Author | Berkeley, George |
|---|---|
| Editor | Turbayne, Colin M. |
| Publication | The Library of the Liberal Arts, 1954 |
| Copyright Date | 1713 |
| Number of Pages | xxx + 113 |
| Extras | Chronology. Editor's Introduction. Selected Bibliography. Note on the text. |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Philosophy |
| When Read | May 1966 |
George Berkeley (pronounced "Barkly"), an Irish mathematician, physicist, philosopher, Fellow of Trinity College in Dublin, and later Bishop of Cloyne, argued that existence was a construction of mind. We know that we have perceptions of colors, shapes, sounds, and smells. These are real in our minds. To go beyond the mind and say that the material things that we take as the origin of these perceptions exist independently of us is speculative and not given to us in the facts - which are just perceptions. There is no proof, and can be no proof, that these things exist independently of our minds. It may well be, and most likely is according to B, that they are ideas placed into our minds by God. B. propounded the theory in his 1710 Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, and then more popularly in these dialogues between Hylas ("materialist") and Philonous ("lover of knowledge" or "lover of mind" - I've seen both translations of the Greek "nous".)
The theory has been called immaterialism, idealism, and in its most extreme form, solipsism, the view that none of us, if indeed there is more than one of us, can ever know anything for certain about anything outside of ourselves - though I think Berkeley denied being a solipsist.
Berkeley was the most radical of the empiricists. As I remember it, neither Locke nor Hume agreed with him and B's position was in direct opposition to that of Locke.
If I remember correctly, not one person in our history of philosophy class agreed with Berkeley. I certainly didn't. However I found it very hard to prove him wrong. Does the tree falling in the forest with no one around make a sound? I thought (and think) that it does. If by "sound" we mean compression waves in the atmosphere, the falling tree certainly produces them. If we mean vibrations of the ear drum and impulses transmitted in the brain, well, they only occur if there are ears and brains around to be affected by the waves, but the waves are still there. I'm not sure that Berkeley would have agreed.
Finally, at least finally that semester, I came to agree with Samuel Johnson when he demonstrated the existence of a stone by kicking it. When I explained that to one of the grad students later at the University of Illinois she laughed and said that Johnson missed Berkeley's point. In kicking the stone Johnson may have done nothing more than set ideas in motion in his head. But I argued that it was Berkeley who missed the point. Kicking the stone, bouncing it along the ground, following the physics of its path, seeing the stone in its new resting place, and so on, were certainly "intersubjective" at the very least. It wasn't just the purely subjective "I" who could see all of this, but anyone watching could also see and report it. Furthermore, the stone would be there when we left and came back the next day, or if it moved, there would be winds, water, people, or animals to account for its motion, all independently of any perceptions of ours. Furthermore, although the immaterialist can apply his argument to any observation whatsoever, he has to appeal to supernatural events, the intervention of God, to explain the intersubjectivity and the regularities in our observations. The materialist need only postulate that what we see is independent of us. Ockham's Razor applies. In other words I accepted that the common sense view of reality that everyone had (I don't know if anyone agreed with Berkeley) was, well, common sense.
That wasn't the end of my dealing with idealism. At Illinois I was introduced by another student to the philosophy of Brand Blanshard, an American philosopher who supported the "coherence" theory of truth. It was not as radical a view as Berkeley's, but it did see human reasoning as fundamental in our understanding of the world. It is when we can tell a fully coherent story that we know it is true because all of the facts, which is to say all of the perceptions that we have, are consistent and accounted for by the theory. They "cohere", and it is their greater coherence that makes them true as well as makes them appear to be true, as compared to other theories that do not cohere as completely.
I don't think very much about theories of truth any more. If I subscribe to any of them, the one that I like best is the "pragmatic" theory of Perce, James, and Dewey. But whether or not we understand the ins and outs of these theories, we have no difficulty at all understanding that science is the path to knowledge. It satisfies the pragmatic criteria, i.e., that we can make accurate predictions based on it.
| Author | Conant, J.B. |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: McGraw Hill |
| Copyright Date | 1961 |
| Number of Pages | viii + 147 |
| Genres | Non-fiction |
| Keywords | Sociology; Education; United States |
| When Read | May 1966 |
Conant, a distinguished professor of chemistry, President of Harvard University, Ambassador to West Germany, and researcher in education, analyzed the problems of schools in poor slums and in middle class suburbs, and the differences in education received by white and black ("Negro" at the time the book was published) children. His analysis is not just about what happens in classrooms but also discusses in some depth issues relating to employment, housing, race relations, and other factors affecting education.
I would have read this book in my Introduction to Sociology class. It was part of an education that progressive professors were producing for students of the 1960's. Looking at the book now (in archive.org) I can see that this was a serious book by a knowledgeable author.
| Author | Maugham, Somerset |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Pocket Books, 1964 |
| Copyright Date | 1943 |
| Number of Pages | 350 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | June 1966 |
After his experience as a pilot in World War I, Larry Darrell is left empty, adrift, without a clear view of the meaning or purpose of his life. He is no longer interested in money or society, he searches for something that will make him feel that his life has meaning and value. He postpones his impending marriage to a woman who wants to advance in the world and, instead, travels and studies, living off a small inheritance. He tries to help an old friend who had lost her husband and child and was now herself lost in alcohol, drugs and casual sex. In the end, Larry returns to the U.S. to live his life as an ordinary working man.
I think I saw the 1946 movie based on this book. I believe it was on TV and watching that led me to read the book. I remember very little of it except that it impressed me as thoughtful and well written, but I don't think it inspired me. I had already reached a point in my philosophical studies that I thought that meaning, truth, and understanding came from the western philosophical and scientific traditions, not from eastern traditions (or western ones for that matter) that embraced spiritualism and mysticism.
| Author | May, Edgar |
|---|---|
| Publication | Harper and Row |
| Copyright Date | 1964 |
| Number of Pages | xi + 227 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Sociology |
| Keywords | United States |
| When Read | June 1966 |
May was a journalist who wrote this book based, in part, on his research in Buffalo New York. He later joined the Johnson Administration, worked for the Ford Foundation, and served in the Vermont House of Representatives and Senate. All I know about the book is what it says in the title and what I found about May himself in the Wikipedia.
I am unable at this time to find either a copy or a review of this book on the Internet except for one review behind a pay wall that wanted me to sign up without even telling me what the cost would be.
I'm pretty sure that I read this book for the same sociology class for which I read Slums and Suburbs.
| Author | France, Anatole |
|---|---|
| Original Language | French |
| Translators | Tristan, Ernest |
| Publication | New York: Modern Library, 1925? |
| Copyright Date | 1890 |
| Number of Pages | 252 |
| Extras | Introduction by Hendrick Van Loon |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | Christianity |
| When Read | July 1966 |
The novel concerns Saint Thaïs, a fourth century Egyptian beauty who converts to Christianity at the urging of a Christian hermit. The beauty repents of her former life and becomes a Christian while the Christian hermit repents of his Christianity to pursue Thaïs. The book was adapted for opera by Jules Massenet.
I suspect that I read this book in a break between semesters, still under the influence of the Upton Sinclair Lanny Budd series. Anatole France was one of the men Lanny much admired in his coming of age years. I had already read Penguin Island (q.v.), liked it, and was looking for more.
| Author | Goffman, Erving |
|---|---|
| Publication | Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1959 |
| Copyright Date | 1956 |
| Number of Pages | 255 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Sociology; Psychology |
| When Read | July 1966 |
Goffman, a professor of sociology, analyzed the way people present themselves to others using ideas borrowed from theater performances. We want others to think well of us and we present ourselves to them in ways that we hope will achieve that goal.
As I recall, this book was a best seller in the United States.
This too would likely have been part of the very well done sociology class I took at the university. I only recall one such class but the professor packed in a fair amount of reading.
Looking back on it, I presume I took a serious interest in this book. Even today, as a 73 year old man living in considerable isolation, I still care what people think of me, though I am probably more self-assured and less interested in manipulating my public image. Well, that's probably not true, but I like to imagine that it is.
| Author | Forster, Arnold |
|---|---|
| Author | Epstein, Benjamin R. |
| Publication | New York: Random House |
| Copyright Date | 1964 |
| Number of Pages | xviii + 294 |
| Extras | index |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Politics |
| Keywords | United States |
| When Read | August 1966 |
In fifteen chapters, the authors describe fifteen leaders and organizations of the radical right, starting with Robert Welch and the John Birch Society and ending with William Buckley Jr. and the National Review. The group of fifteen is divided into two subgroups, the "Radical Right", proponents of racism and/or conspiracy theories, and "Extreme Conservatives" (including Buckley) who share the Radical Right's view of what is wrong with American political, economic and social policy, but who tend not to promote racism and conspiracy theories. All of the listed and discussed people and organizations were still active in 1964.
From the Forward to an edition published by the Anti-Defamation League:
"It has been estimated that some 20 percent of the American electorate can be grouped as Extremists on the Right Wing. Therein dwell the Radical Rightists and Extreme Conservatives. Therein also can be found those who would vote for a candidate who ran on an anti-Semitic or anti-Negro platform. Such a candidate would attract the racists, the bigots, the kooks and the yahoos to be found among the Extremists who are tempted into accepting the phony nostrums and panaceas of any or all fake medicine men who range the political scene in America."
"Opposing them all with real conviction are some 25 to 30 percent of Americans. The remaining 50 or 55 percent of American citizens are the prize to be won. The moderate and liberal constituency struggles to win this majority over the Radical Right or to insulate the majority against it."
I presume that the ADL developed and published this book via Random House, a mainstream publisher, in order to distribute it more effectively and to a wider audience than a Jewish civil rights organization could reach on its own. However I have found later publications reprinted by ADL more directly, via Greenwood Press, a company that has gone through multiple hands, and by Praeger, originally a conservative, but not extreme right, publisher who was acquired by Greenwood.
I attribute my reading of this and many other books to my Sociology professor at the University of Pittsburgh, though I also took a course on political science that might, possibly, have assigned this book. I still think that the Sociology guy was the one who assigned it. I hope he didn't get in trouble for his liberal views. I imagine he did not. By the mid-1960's the American universities had moved pretty firmly into the liberal camp, where I presume they continue to reside today.
I'm prepared to trust that the ADL's breakdown of American political views - 20% extreme right, 25-30% people who oppose that with conviction, and 50-55% "the prize to be won" - was accurate at the time the breakdown was written. I fear that it's still accurate today and possibly a little worse now in the era of Donald Trump.
Some weeks ago I saw a television reporter ask a young woman Trump supporter what she thought about something Trump said that was patently false. She said she believed it. He demonstrated to her that it was false. She showed a moment of consternation on her face. It cleared in just a second or two and then she said "I don't care."
| Author | Kosinski, Jerzy |
|---|---|
| Publication | Boston: Houghton Mifflin |
| Copyright Date | 1965 |
| Number of Pages | 272 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| Keywords | World War II |
| When Read | August 1966 |
A six year old boy is sent by his Jewish or Gypsy (both were objects of extermination by the Nazis) parents to live with a Polish woman in order to save him from the Holocaust in Poland, but the woman dies and the boy must find a way to survive on his own. He goes from place to place among the most primitive and barbaric imaginable people in the rural countryside. He is exposed either as victim or witness to child abuse, sexual perversion, murder, rape, torture, and all sorts of inhuman experiences. Finally, the war ends and his parents find and reclaim him.
The book was a best seller that made a big impression on the reading public.
It's hard to imagine how anyone could have "liked" this book. I don't even think I "admired" it, in the way that we can sometimes admire writing that doesn't appeal to us. Nevertheless, it was shocking and attention getting. It exposed the reader to a primitive barbarism that we don't imagine still existed anywhere in Europe. It wasn't the more or less advanced barbarism of the Nazis, but the barbarism of ancient forests beyond the borders of the Roman Empire (not that the Romans were above barbarism.)
A long time after I read the book, I don't remember exactly when, I came across the criticism leveled at Kosiński for his authorship of this book. He had implied that the book was autobiographical but critics found evidence that, although his parents were Jewish, they had been able to successfully masquerade as Catholic Poles for the duration of the war. In addition, earlier novels and stories were found that had been written by Polish authors that had much the same material, indicating that significant portions of the book were plagiarized. Kosiński committed suicide in 1991. It is not publicly known for sure whether the allegations against him were the cause of his decision to kill himself.
I read Kosiński's Being There later in 1974.
| Author | Wolfe, Thomas |
|---|---|
| Editor | Aswell, Edward Campbell |
| Publication | New York: New American Library / Signet Books, 1966 |
| Copyright Date | 1937 |
| Number of Pages | 640 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | September 1966 |
Wolfe died in 1938 before this book was published. Aswell, the chief editor at Harpers, is said to have "extracted" the book from a larger manuscript that later also produced You Can't Go Home Again. In terms of plot and purpose, the story is said to be a continuation of the story in Look Homeward Angel, though the name of the main character and his circumstances are very different.
I have the original paperback that I read in my basement and have taken the bibliographic data from that. The verso of the title page shows October, 1966 as the date of publication of this edition, so my artificial reading date may be off, but I'll leave it alone. Publishers do sometimes release books before "official" publication dates. I recall reading the book but, as I have come to expect from books I read decades ago, over five of them in this case, I don't remember it and can't disentangle whatever dim memories I have from the Internet notes I found when looking it up.
| Author | Shaw, George Bernard |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: The New American Library / Signet Classic, 1960 |
| Copyright Date | various |
| Number of Pages | 447 |
| Extras | Forward by Eric Bentley |
| Genres | Theater play |
| When Read | September 1966 |
This edition (extant in my basement) contains four plays, "Mrs. Warren's Profession", "Arms and the Man", "Candida", and "Man and Superman".
I don't remember if I read all four of the plays. Certainly in later years I would have written down the name of a play that I read with information about the collection in which I found it, rather than just the name of the collection, if I hadn't read the whole book. My later notes (1998) on "Mrs. Warren's Profession" brought that story back to me.
| Author | Dostoevsky, Fyodor |
|---|---|
| Original Language | Russian |
| Translators | Garnett, Constance |
| Publication | Unknown |
| Copyright Date | 1880 |
| Number of Pages | 840 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| Keywords | Russia |
| When Read | October 1966 |
Dostoevsky's last novel was a sprawling, philosophical story of three brothers, Dmitry, Ivan, and Alexei, the sons of Fyodor Karamazov by two different mothers. The story is largely told in sections by or about one or other of the sons. It was, I think, what we would later call an "experimental" novel. It included a very long (140 pages or so if I remember correctly) "poem" or extended essay, "The Grand Inquisitor", in which Ivan tells a story of the risen Christ in the hands of the Grand Inquisitor of the Inquisition in Spain. Jesus has come back to earth but his new miracles and good works are now seen by the Inquisitor as interfering with the mission of the church. The Inquisitor questions Jesus, explaining to him why, in terrible but powerful logic, Jesus' notions of good and evil are no longer right for the world.
The oldest brother, Dmitry (each of the brothers is known by multiple diminutives in the Russian style) is a rake and a dissolute man, perhaps most like his father. The middle son Ivan, author of the Inquisitor, is who we might call the philosopher. He is both rationalist and nihilist, a depressed and pessimistic man who is nevertheless fully capable of analyzing his situation and the situation of the world as a whole. The youngest, Alexei (known most often as Alyosha) is a young monk, the recipient of Ivan's obsessive monologues. He is the idealist among the three, depressed by what Ivan has to say to him but determined to seek good in the world.
I don't know if the above is a good abstract or not. It is more than 53 years since I read the novel, but it made a very strong impression on me at the time and there are still traces of that impression in my brain. It was the second novel of D's that I read after The House of the Dead. It captivated me. I had determined to major in philosophy by this time and I don't think I had read a novel that was quite as philosophical before - quite as obsessed with questions like the existence of God, the nature of good and evil, or the value of life. For some time after, I considered Dostoevsky to be the best novelist that I had read, an idea that was reinforced by my later reading of Crime and Punishment. However it was not too many years after that that I gave up the notion of a "best" author and concluded that there were too many incommensurable ways that a book can be great. We haven't even seen all of them yet and probably never will because there will, or at least might, always be new ones to discover or create.
I read The Possessed just two years ago in 2018. It may have been the last of D's major novels that I hadn't already read. I often save something from the great novelists for my last years and this was the one of D's that I had reserved. I found it just as compelling as the ones I had read years before in the 1960's, 70's, and 80's.
| Author | Lagerkvist, Par |
|---|---|
| Original Language | se |
| Translators | Blair, Alan |
| Publication | New York: Vintage Books / Knopf / Random House |
| Copyright Date | 1951 |
| Number of Pages | xii + 180 |
| Extras | Preface by Lucien Maury |
| Extras | Letter by André Gide |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | Christianity |
| When Read | October 1966 |
In the New Testament story of the crucifixion, Jesus is tried by Pontius Pilate along with two other common criminals. Following a Passover tradition, he offers the men to a crowd of Jews who have come and asks them whom he should free. They respond, "Give us Barabbas". Barabbas is freed.
Lagerkvist was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1951, shortly after publishing this novel.
I don't remember enough of the book to offer actual memories. I do know however that Barabbas is portrayed as feeling guilty that he lived in place of the great and beloved Jesus Christ. However, although he, Barabbas, wants to believe, he can't conquer his doubts.
By this time, I had no doubts. I was convinced that God did not exist. Lagerkvist may also have been convinced but, unlike me, he still had a deep sympathy for the religious impulse. I go back and forth on that issue - often feeling sympathy for those with the religious impulse, also often feeling that the science is pretty clear, no credible evidence has been advanced for the existence of God, some physical principles (like conservation of energy) would seem to conflict with the existence of God, and belief is just not warranted even if, somehow, the possibility of God is not precluded. But all this is too much to discuss in a book note.
| Author | Cooper, James Fenimore |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966 |
| Copyright Date | 1823 |
| Number of Pages | xxvi + 476 |
| Extras | Introduction by Leon Howard |
| Extras | Preface by the Author |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | American frontier |
| When Read | November 1966 |
This was the first book published in the Leatherstocking series. It introduced the main character Nathaniel "Natty" Bumppo who appears as "Hawkeye" in several others. The story takes place in 1793 making it the fourth in the chronological order of Bumppo's adventures.
After Deerslayer and The Last of the Mohicans I decided to read the rest of the series. I don't know whether I thought this was the third in the series or whether it was just the third one I found in the local library. I think this one made the weakest impression on me of the three that I had read so far. Cooper's experience and literary skills advanced after this early work.
| Author | Bartley, William W. |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Knopf |
| Copyright Date | 1962 |
| Number of Pages | 223 |
| Genres | Philosophy; Rationalism |
| Keywords | Religion |
| When Read | November 1966 |
Bartley attempts to differentiate rationalist and anti-rationalist attitudes in religion and philosophy.
Bartley was a young professor at the University of Pittsburgh from 1963 to 1969, covering all of my years there from 64-68. Judging from a photo of him on the Internet, I think I met him in my Ethics class, where he filled in for Kurt Baier when Baier was absent for the first week of the semester. It's possible that I had a full semester class from Bartley but I don't recall it. Perhaps I was assigned the book by another professor (likely I think), or perhaps I read it on my own.
The question of rationalism is an important one. Justifying one's beliefs by an appeal to "faith" strikes me, and struck Bartley I think, as foolish. Justification via "revelation" seems even more foolish, going one step beyond mere faith to acceptance of faith imposed by others. Thank you Rene Descartes for your helping to break us from such bondage.
| Author | Melville, Herman |
|---|---|
| Editor | Feidelson, Charles Jr. |
| Publication | Indianapolis: The Library of Literature, 1964 |
| Copyright Date | 1851 |
| Number of Pages | xlv + 730 |
| Extras | maps, drawings, etymology, illustration, footnotes, extracts, preface, introduction, bibliographical notes |
| Genres | Fiction |
| Keywords | Sailing |
| When Read | November 1966 |
"Call me Ishmael. Some years ago - never mind how long precisely - having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off - then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can."
Believed by some (including me) to be among the very greatest novels by an American author of any time, the work was financially unsuccessful and known to few Americans during Melville's lifetime.
My very excellent professor of American literature at Pitt, whose name I have now forgotten, paced back and forth in front of the class, head bent, eyes focused only on his inner thoughts, telling us about Melville's life, his stifling years at the customs house, and his obituary in the New York Times that got his name wrong, "Herbert" instead of "Herman" Melville. He and Melville made a deep impression on me. I would have written in the above abstract that Melville was "the greatest" American author and not just "among the greatest". It was what I thought at the time I read it and for years after. But my views on the notion of greatness changed as I grew older, read more, and came to the conclusion that there can be no single standard of greatness and that people and works can be great in incommensurable ways. So my abstract and notes written on this day in 2020 have to be modified from my initial feelings about the book.
It was a great book. Although I read it almost 54 years ago, I can still remember Ishmael hypnotized by the rocking of the waves while peering out at the sea from the masthead, or Ishmael and other sailors with their arms and hands in a barrel, squeezing the blubber to make it soft and liquid, falling deeper and deeper into a trance, squeezing each others hands without knowing it.
The work was underappreciated when its author was alive and went out of print before Melville died in 1891. Though it was reprinted the year after, it was only revived and fully appreciated in the 20th century.
I was impressed. I went on to read a numbr of other books by Melville and there are still a few more extant that I may yet have time to read.
| Author | Hawthorne, Nathaniel |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Signet Classic / New American Library, 1961 |
| Copyright Date | 1851 |
| Number of Pages | ix + 286 |
| Extras | Afterword by Edward C. Samson |
| Extras | Selected bibliography |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | December 1966 |
Published in the same year as Moby Dick and assigned to my American literature class by the same professor, this novel couldn't be much more different from Melville's. It is a Gothic novel of crime and punishment in an old house, inhabited by the memories, if not the ghosts, of old crimes and old owners.
I don't remember anything of this novel. I have a much stronger memory of The Scarlet Letter, which I think was assigned reading in junior high school, perhaps just before I began recording the authors and titles of the books that I read.
My recollection is that I felt affronted by The Scarlet Letter, that the young woman in the story was punished for something that was not her fault, and the young preacher whose fault it was never took responsibility. At the early age when I read it I probably still thought that books should have a moral plot and ending and I may not have been old enough to realize that Hawthorne probably believed that as well. Public school systems, and no doubt private ones too, didn't assign the kinds of books that I liked and which I assumed other kids my age would like too. I wonder how much it had to do with the gender difference between me and the teachers. The girls in class may have liked the assigned novels more than I did and the boys, a lot of them just didn't like or read books at all.
| Author | James, Henry |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Modern Library / Random House, 1966 |
| Copyright Date | 1881 |
| Number of Pages | xlii + 591 |
| Extras | Preface to the New York Edition by Henry James |
| Extras | Introduction by Fred B. Millett |
| Extras | bibliography |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | December 1966 |
Isabel Archer, a wealthy young American woman, is invited to visit her aunt and uncle in England and, from there, travels to Rome. At several points on the trip she is propositioned by different men, some perhaps falling in love with her, others after her money. She marries one in Rome but it turns out that he's one of the ones after her money. In the end she resolves to do something, but we are not sure what it will be.
I remember very little of the book. It is only the overall impressions that have stuck with me. My first impression was that it was slow and of very limited interest to me. Moby Dick was a novel of big themes, life and death, the confrontation of man and nature and man and man, even the meaning of life. Portrait of a Lady was a novel of restricted life, lived within rigid social conventions and petty shenanigans. It seemed mundane, a novel of manners.
At some point in my reading, my views began to change. Or maybe I should say that at some point my appreciation began to change. James was an intelligent, subtle, and sophisticated observer. He saw and described things that I wouldn't have seen on my own. His people, and especially his main character Isabel Archer, had depth and were capable of growth and perception. By the end I was liking the book a lot and later read a number of other books by James.